1894 – Birth of Emil Thuy, German World War I fighter ace; he became an adviser to the Finnish air force and was involved in the secret origins of the Luftwaffe within the Soviet Union.

1918 – Canadian World War I fighter ace Frank Granger Quigley shoots down a balloon and later, in a single mission, three Pfalz D.III with his Sopwith Camel.

1939 – First flight of the Willoughby Delta 8, a British twin-engined aerodynamic testbed for a proposed flying wing airliner.

1940 – A Bristol Blenheim of No.82 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, surprises and sinks U-31 on the surface in the Schillig Roads near Wilhelmshaven, Germany; the U-31 is the first U-boat of the war to be sunk by an RAF aircraft without the assistance of surface vessels.

1982 – Widerøe Flight 933, a De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter (shown), crashes after it suffered structural failure in the vertical stabilizer and rudder during clear-air turbulence, killing all 15; despite conspiracy theories about a collision with a Royal Air Force, several later investigations reached no such conclusion.

1982 – Death of Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin, Soviet aviator; he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1934 for the rescue of SS Chelyuskin crew from an improvised airfield on the frozen surface of the Chukchi Sea near Kolyuchin Island.

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About the author

Online Editor I've been around airplanes since I was a kid. That's when my uncle, a professional pilot, showed me how to fly his Cessna 177 Cardinal. l later became a writer and editor, so covering the exciting and ever-changing aviation industry -- which I've been doing in Flight Journal's Flybys since the late '90s -- was a natural fit.